Mod Post: Off-Topic Tuesday

[icon_uk]

In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like.

Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.

Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.

It's been suggested that, if discussing spoilers for recent media events, it might be advisable to consider using the rot13 method to prevent other members seeing spoilers in passing.

The world situation is the world situation. If you're following the news, you know it as much as I do, if you're not, then there are better sources than scans_daily. But please, no doomscrolling, for your own sake.

LEGO have announced the release of their first ever Tintin set, the iconic rocket from Destination Moon/Explorers on the Moon, which will come with minifigures of Tintin, Captain Haddock, Snowy and Thomson and Thompson.

Maul: Shadow Lord got a trailer in advance of it's April release, showing nice graphics but a lot of very very dark scenes in terms of lighting. We get it; "Dark Side", "Shadow Lord"... at least turn on a damn light every now and again.

The Buffy Reboot has been cancelled before making it to screen, and Sarah Michelle Gellar" has spoken about why.

Space Sheriff Gavan Infinity won points for unespectedness when they introduced their latest Gavan but I won't spoil it for anyone in advance of clicking on the link.

Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men had an interesting discussion about genetics in the X-verse, with an actual qualified geneticist.

The Oscars happened, but I wasn't paying attention, so have no idea if anything unexpected happened.

Comments

[tripodeca113]

gasp! They found two missing Doctor Who episodes!
And their parts two and three from The Dalek's Master Plan! The Holy Grail of lost Doctor Who episodes!
Apparently an anonymous man left his film collection to a local archive after he died. We're all very grateful to him, but apparently he knew what he had and so every day he decided not to share this with the world....

I sent an artist an email about a commission. Still no response after a week so I contacted them on social media. And noticed they hadn't had updated anywhere in over a month.
There was an unkownability to this which I found deeply unsettling....but then they contact me!

Hey look images of the Aang movie!
Yes they accidentally released some T-shirts featuring the characters (our last glimpse of the movie was some concept art they showed to some journalist who then put some pictures of that online)

Where is Suki and all that

I finished reading the first omnibus of Hitman. Good stuff. Maybe I'll read Preacher next.

made it up to season eleven of The Walking Dead.
It's the longest season with 24 episodes. I don't think the writers had enough plot for that since the first nine episodes are dedicated to our heroes (and whichever minor characters who weren't dead yet) go to fight some bandits to get the supplies they need.
It takes them two episodes to walk there....
You know this show has had it's ups and downs (season two, season eight) but I think this is the show at it's most boring. Literally any other subplot is more interesting than the main plot.

Also there's a fourth community which was untouched by the recent war, but they never mention them or suggest going there for supplies.
The next two thirds of this season better be much better....

[icon_uk]

Wait, I DIDN'T mention the DW episodes? I am a bad baaaad nerd!

Though it's episodes 1 and 3 they have found, they already have 2, so we now have the first three in a row.

The charitable trust, Film is Fabulous have been doing amazing work in terms of archiving lost media

[metadronos]

Missing from the above-linked People article, about the cancelled Buffy reboot, is whether Joss Whedon was to have been involved in its production in any capacity.

[iamrman]

Rom. For me, the series lost something after the Dire Wraiths were defeated. Bill Mantlo somehow managed to wring more issues out of the series though. There was something about a new breed of Spaceknights, but I just skimmed over those issues.

Sensational She-Hulk. Steve Gerber takes a swipe at the merchandise juggernaut that was the 1989 Batman film. Once upon a time I would have hated this, but I have since come around to quite liking Gerber’s writing. I’m still not quite sold on Howard the Duck though.

Silver Surfer. The Silver Surfer believes Mantis to be dead and Steve Englehart won’t let us forget about it. There is an interesting story underneath all the character shilling, though.

A little light this week. Most of my time has been taken up with the new WWE game.

[leahandillyana]

For several weeks I’ve been extremely busy and didn’t have time to read anything for longer than minutes and not hours at a time. I have nonetheless managed to finish a couple of visual novels and decided to post a few mini reviews of my experiences.

I finished the two other Ertal games I purchased at the end of last year, Chasing the Stars and Lurkers. Lurkers is very clearly the developer’s first game, with its short and intuitive story, romantic ‘routes’ that amount to a little more other than a love confession, and amateurish art with only a few full illustrations. It genuinely should have been a free game, I find it not worth the (very low) price. Chasing the Stars is a much better game, but still weak in comparision to My Burning Heart – while the story is interesting, the romantic routes are well developed and the sex scenes are fantastic (it’s one of very few BL VNs that have group sex), ultimately I find no ending to be emotionally satisfying. The writing is good, I just expected more of adventure/mystery than erotica, and in no ending do all characters have their efforts acknowledged (I cannot really explain it without spoiling the story).

I have finally completed my YuelTavi reading challenge (well, I still have to read Unluckily in Love, but other than the game, I’ve read everything Ebi-hime has written for her blorbos thus far). All Ashes and Illusions is the original tale, a pseudohistorical romance that is, in the final scene, revealed to be a long burn revenge story. It’s an absolutely amazing game and I deeply recommend reading it if you can stomach dark stories. Great writing, great art, great sex scenes (het this time). Following the game, I’ve read the second part of All Scars and Starlight, a sequel story based on a scenario diverging from Ashes late into the story. The second part is an even darker story, following the relationship between the leads becoming steadily more toxic to the point of being homicidally suicidal, and I found it genuinely difficult to read (in a good way). It however manages to eventually return to the hopeful ending of the first part. If you’ve watched The Interview with the Vampire tv series, you have a general idea what to expect (minus vampirism). A great game in all aspects, I especially enjoyed the callbacks to the events of Ashes. Finally, I’ve read both parts of The Thistle and the Flower, YuelTavi victorian AU that is dedicated in large part to erotica starring our favourite cousins. I may be repeating myself, but the game is great in every aspect – the sex scenes portray a relationship that is both very kinky and aggressively wholesome, the art is amazing (I especially loved the supremely silly faces the characters make during sex, it reminds me of Patient S Remedy), and in general the story kept making my day every time I had an opportunity to read it.

Recently Mangagamer made some of their releases free on Steam, which I took an advantage of. Despite being a big fan of When Cicadas Cry, I have never played the officially translated version of the games, so reading Onikakushi was a fresh experience to me. The story in the game feel deeper than its manga or anime adaptations due to nature of the game allowing for insertion of much larger quantities of text, making everything flow more naturally. Unfortunately, I finished the story in under two hours so Steam doesn’t allow me to purchase Higurashi emoticons and backgrounds. Oh well. In addition to Cicadas, I’ve read Dead End Aegis Gaiden, a short prequel portraying the very beginning of the war and the awakenings of the three original magical girls. It’s much tamer than the original game, to the point of the rape scene not being referred to as such, and genuinely may give a potential reader wrong impression about the story, but it’s nonetheless a worthwhile reading material if you liked the relevant characters in the original game.

For its fourth anniversary Nu:Carnival announced an upcoming collaboration with Nitroplus Chiral, the studio that is unironically LEGENDARY in BL fandom. Whatever the form the collaboration will takes, I hope I will be able to enjoy it. It also reminded me that I haven’t played N+C games since Sweet Pool last year. Gosh, I think I will take a week off work to at least read through Togainu no Chi, I keep having dreams set within the novel’s setting and especially one presented an alternative reading of the story’s events I wanted to write down, but will have to actually read the game to be certain how off the interpretation was. Also, Magia Exedra has updated a lot of content since last time I was able to play it, with main story now finally covering the events of Rebellion and the beginning of The Legend of Jeanne d’Arc, as well as adding the first character who were not playable in Magia Record (Koito Asako, a side character in Oriko Magica who becomes a magical girl in the epilogue of Sadness Prayer manga). I genuinely recommend playing it if only for having a good and free adaptation of all the core storylines, especially when awaiting the ever-postponed Walpurgisnacht Rising. Does the movie even have a release date now?!

I failed spectacularly with my anime this season – due to lack of time I gave up on all series other than Champignon Witch after 2-3 episodes, and even with Witch the last episode I’ve seen was the 5th one, and as much as I loved the series I simply cannot find the strength to continue watching it. I wish I could, but the backlog is now so large that I won’t have any means to reasonably cover it like ever TT_TT

Fourth volume of Heaven Official’s Blessing and first volume of Scum Villain’s Self Saving System were released in Polish in gorgeous editions. However, and I cannot help but repeat myself, I’ve had no time to read them yet. How I hate it that I have to work weekends and have overtime every day!

I’m kinda failing with my personal life due to overworking myself. I’m late with my gardening duties, I haven’t cooked anything in a very long time, haven’t painted anything, long gave up on scrapbooking, and in general everything is so trashfire that I keep dreaming of trashfires when I am not watching TnC fanfiction in my dreams. :/ If I die, it is because I had to work for almost 12 hours on Saturday and my body cannot keep up with this pace.